In Oliena, the pitch-note of Easter Sunday is given by the young men – and recently also women –, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of ancient bandits, who since the early morning are continuously firing from the rooftops. Wherever we go down there, lead, shot and shell casings are continuously falling on our heads.

Oliena, Wild West. Recording by Lloyd Dunn, 27 March 2016

A procession starts from the church of St. Francis, with the statue of the Virgin Mary, who wanders the streets of the old town in search of her son. Meanwhile, in the church of the Holy Cross, amid polyphonic Sardinian folk songs, they decorate the statue of the Risen Christ, and then also another procession starts from the door of the church to the main square.

I turn back to the Holy Cross church for a photo of the empty square. A young woman in an apron stands on the corner, looking anxiously back and forth. “Has Christ already gone?” “Five minutes ago”. “Oh, Madonna. Every year I’m late.”

On the main square, along a path bestudded with rosemary branches, the two processions are approaching each other. The encounter takes place, s’incontru, which gives name to the whole festival. Christ bows before her mother, the Sardinian men before the Sardinian women carrying her. Then all the participants, and the entire public dressed in traditional costume, retires in double row to the St. Ignatius church for the Easter high mass. Along the main street, every bar has already put out the tables and chairs. The locals – and with them we, too – go from place to place, tasting the almond cakes offered for free at this time in every bar. Friends meet, groups condense and disperse, like colorful flocks of bird they are swirling in the maze of the aviary of the town.

On Holy Saturday, time stops in Sardinia, as the soccer ball in the air. In the valley of Ogliastra, in the towns of Gàiro, Ulassai, Osini, from the Descent from the Cross on Friday night to the Resurrection in Sunday morning, the churches are empty, the streets deserted, only an old woman passes along them with a pint of water brought from the public well. Heavy, drowsy sunlight trickles down the side of the valley, blending with the scent of the fresh green grass, rosemary and wild thyme, lizards and old men are basking in it. If the clouds did not fly up from the sea in the late afternoon to curtain off the sun like the purple shroud the stripped-down crucifixes of the churches, this day would never end.

The church of St. Ignatius is covered in complete darkness, only the lanterns of the male and female ministrants are lit, as the procession starts from the sanctuary through the aisle and the medieval streets of Oliena. They visit seven churches in memory of the seven sorrows of Mary, they are lined with their lanterns in the front gate, while the members of the local confraternities – the religious associations who organize the Holy Week rites, which you see below in the the mosaic tiles – walk out and join them. The procession, which grew into a large crowd, returns in an hour to the church of St. Ignatius. Here in the sanctuary they have already set up the monumental medieval crucifix with movable arms, and the choir is assembled, dressed in Baroque folk costume, sings polyphonic religious songs. It is the beginning of s’iscravamentu, the tradition of the Descent from the Cross, preserved from the Middle Ages.

The church fortress and town of Ardara (Sardinia) after tempest, at sunset

El Greco: Toledo, or Tempest above Toledo, ca. 1599, the first Spanish landscape. Art historical analysis explains in many ways the stormy sky, from the artist’s troubled state of mind through his relationship to God to a presentiment of a threatening future. Is it not possible that he only painted what he saw?

“Wanderer, come nearer to see, what hides in the shadow. For though he lies buried,the letters indicated by the combination of numbers will clearly revealwho rests in this coffin, who Memphis is preparinga new celestial sphere for.”*

Tears of Love, shed by the eminent City of Barcelona […] in the magnificent mourning rituals dedicated to the beloved and venerated memory of her deceased King and Lord, don Carlos II […] Described by Joseph Rocaberti. Barcelona: Juan Pablo Martí, 1701, p. 263. The text is to be supplemented according to the numeric combinations. Charles II died without a heir, and his death ignitd the long world war known as the War of the Spanish Succession. Most of the Spanish printers paid a tribute to the memory of the deceased ruler with a variety of exaggerated visual, enigmatic and “metametric” poems, which clearly reveal, what an effort it was to fill the blank pages when there was so little good to say.

Initial A (alfa) on fol. 6 of the Commentary to John’s Revelations, illuminated by Beatus Facundus (see the history of these codex) for Ferdinand I of Castille and León (completed in 1047, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional). Christ, standing under the initial and pointing to it, holds the letter omega in His hand: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, says the Lord” (Rev 1:8)

The Sotoportego del Tagiapiera, the Gateway and Courtyard of the Stonemasons in Venice, opens with two elegant neo-classical columns from the Campielo del Sol, the Little Square of the Sun, which in the Middle Ages was called Campielo de la Scoazera, the Square of the Refuse Dump. In fact, since the 15th century here was the walled dumping-ground of the Rialto quarter, from where the burchieri, the freight haulers, on behalf of the Magistrato alle Acque, regularly carried the garbage out of the city on gondolas. In 1617, the refuse dump was ended, the walls pulled down, and later the transport route of the gondolas, the Rio Terà San Silvestro – Rio Terà Sant’Aponal channel also filled (this is referred to by the word Terà = terrato, buried) and converted into a pedestrian road. Thereby the stonemasons’ yard also became accessible by land. Nevertheless they continued to bring here through the back gate, along Rio de le Becarie, the Istrian stone and carry away the stone carvings intended to decorate the city’s many buildings.

In Venice they begin to massively build in stone instead of wood in the 14th century. Then in 1307 they founded the stonemasons guild, whose scuola, the seat of their religious and corporate life, was on the top floor of the three-level building next to the nearby church of Sant’Aponal. This is recalled in the relief dated 1603 with the inscription “SCOLA DEL TAGIAPIERA”, the Scuola of the Stonemasons, and with the figures of the Quattro Santi Coronati, that is the four Christian stonemasons of ancient Rome, crowned with the wreath of martyrs. The first depiction of the stonemasons yard survived from 1545 in a manuscript.

I got this far in my lecture to the group, when two young men, who were talking in front of one of the courtyard’s workshops, ask me with a smile: “What is so interesting in this yard?” “That this was the first stonemason yard of Venice,” I reply. And that it is very nice anyway. The whole court, the pillars, the blacksmith’s work, the knockers,” I point at the door behind them. “Yes, now a blacksmith works here,” says one of them. “But earlier there was a carpenter’s workshop there, that of my grandfather. Back there, through the riverside gate they brought in the raw wood from the boats, there they unloaded it in the courtyard, here he processed it and made tables and cabinets out of it.

“Where do you come from?” the other asks. “From Hungary.” “Oh yes? Do you know that the Serenissima and Hungary fought for a long time for Dalmatia, until it passed to Venice?” he asks proudly. “Of course. And do you know,” I riposte, “where the agreement about it was signed between the two states?” “No.” “Well, across the street, in the church of San Silvestro, in 1409.” “Seriously?” they asks in astonishment. “We have grown up here, but never heard about it.” “Yes, there’s a plaque on the wall of the church,” I say. Having spoken of it, we go there with the group, so they can also see, after the previous one, this second Hungarian memorial place in Venice.

“On 9 July 1409 was signed in this church the document by which the Kingdom of Hungary renounced all rights over Zara and Dalmatia in favor of Venice, thus consolidating for centuries the ancient ties between Dalmatia and Venice. Erected by the Dalmatian Society of the History of the Homeland on 29 November 2013.”